The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

All I have done thus far is, run through the game at normal difficulty. Im gonna bump it up tonight.

 

LOL! That was a bit presumptuous. I thought that the hospital rooftop rescue was the only mission! I can see I still have a ways to go I saw the credits after being rescued and assumed that was it!

 

anywho... This is probably quite cheeky but I still don't know of any decent split screen/party mode games for PC :-( --I'm impatient!

edit: Hmm that was weird I sub-consciously absorbed presumptuous from omegaman7s post and have now changed it so it doesn't look like I'm copying

 

Kevin - go back and read my post about finger positions. Go down to the bottom of the post, the small letters - written just for you! (Follow the link - it's back two pages, page 132, 15. May 2009 @ 21:17.) It's the bottom section of the ungodly long post, with the small letters, titled "Originally posted by Rich's tutorial on the "F-You" finger position!"

You don't use controls for turning - today's PC games (for the last 7 or 8 years) use something called free mouse look - your mouse is your head turning, and w then goes forward in that direction. For movement, you use only WASD, and point your mouse where you want to go.

Good point! I figured as much. The laptop is brilliant at divx and similar - outperforming my p4!! It does have 128mb on the graphics card so I was curious - but the laptop video card obviously can't begin to compare to a 3850, lol, 3 fps versus 30+.

By the way, Kevin, congrats on saving $10 on the game, mofo!! Ah hah, the truth comes out - just one campaign in under 3 hours. But you WERE playing normal, not easy as we thought, so good for you. Yeah go play the other three campaigns - then you'll be ready for online.

Then find an hour to go through the Developer's Commentary where you'll be ahead of 95% of the other players in understanding what went into making the game. You'll come upon my mate Miles Estes, the guy who animated the whole game as well as modeled Francis and Zoey, at the first machine gun post (generator room No Mercy - the campaign you just did.) He gives one more commentary later.

Then one day, for more practice Single Player with the bots, do all the campaigns on Advanced! Much harder! I finally beat No Mercy with the bots on Advanced - holding out next to the ammo - using an smg instead of the assault rifle.

By the way guys, I have talked with Sam about this, after trying auto shotgun versus my normal assault rifle, I switched to smg just to see how it would work, and it offers excellent close-range "crowd control" on horde attacks, decent mid-range accuracy, and surprisingly, from my experience at surviving the Advanced finale of No Mercy and escaping with all my bots, it seems to bring down the damn Advanced tank as well, (Sam thinks 10,000 health versus Normal tank at 6000 health) perhaps coming close to the effectiveness of the auto shottie.

The Uzi gives you 500 rounds of ammo, versus 300 for the assault rifle. It fires VERY fast, which is good for zombie killing. It reloads VERY fast, which is also very good of course - that's the one thing I didn't like about the auto shottie.

So for the next while, I'm using the Uzi that you get at the beginning of the game, and sticking with it! LOL!

Rich Estes

 

The Assault rifle has 410 ammo versus 500 but does a lot more damage. Downside is you walk slower holding it.

 

Rich,
Im getting pretty good(In my opinion) using the keyboard and mouse in conjunction. It took some time, but its almost become second nature. Your tutorial is exactly what my fingers do. Most logical! I must have somehow overlooked the flashlight part somewhere. I didnt realize that THATS whats been startling the witch! LOL! Learn something new everyday eh LOL. THANK YOU

Kevin

 

Mouse and keyboard will always be better for PC games. Only console ports and driving games really work well with a game pad. In console shooters, you usually have some degree of aim-assist on. In PC shooters aim-assist is mostly non-existent. You will aim more precisely, react quicker, and conserve more ammo using a keyboard and mouse.

I honestly can't stand 90% of shooters on a gamepad.

 

Yah... im totally ok with the mouse and keyboard now. Though my mouse is gonna be a battery HOG, playing games LOL! It ran out while playing last night LOL! No biggie. I have rechargeable batteries that I use for it. My keyboard is pushing 3 months, where my mouse usually lasts a week, due to the laser no doubt. In fact, I have 2 sets of rechargeables, so im never down

Eventually, I wouldnt mind those mice that can dock, and charge via usb power

 

LOL Cordless mice are another minor taboo for gamers. They never seem to be as snappy and responsive as corded mice. I myself abhor any mouse that needs charging. Deathmatch doesn't pause for a charge or battery swap

Hey Rich, Sam, everyone... I'll be on Steam tomorrow and ready to play as soon as I wake up. Everyone polish your cases, clean your mice, and dust your heatsinks. We're gonna party it up

 

Really? My mouse has been snappy since day one. Ive had this particular mouse for almost 4 years. Perhaps they dont make um like they used to These batteries are kind of old. When I first started using um, they would last closer to 4 weeks. But im a much more avid user now LOL! Anyhow, it doesn't take long to switch um out in a hurry. Probably between 10 and 20 seconds.

 

Something just made me rather nervous! I minimized GTA IV, and went to the start bar, and noticed a new task. "Revoke license" and it had the GTA IV icon! WTF!!! I bought my friggin game. Why would that be there? This is one of the few games out there worth buying.

By the way. I dont regret buying Left 4 Dead either

 

heres a random question just to break up all the gaming talk! not on purpose though lol. I am outputting to my sony 7.1 head unit from my pc via optical audio - but if I leave it on 'auto detect' it only detects a 2 channel output from the PC. Also, when playing call of duty 5, the option to select my speaker configuration is greyed out on 'stereo'. I am currently playing music on the prologic setting, which is good, but when gaming I thought it should detect it as dolby digital?

 

Hey Rubix from down under. I am not the genius these other guys are, but did you check control panel - look under sounds, and make sure it shows your speaker setup as being 7.1. I know that Counter Strike goes to the control panel setting, no matter what you really have. It ignores whatever you type in the Counter Strike speaker test, if you have something else in control panel. I just came across that the other day. You've probably already done that, lol.

Kevin - funny I'm using a battery mouse on my laptop - optical wireless - and I like it so much I'm using it also on the gaming rig. So far I agree - no lag whatsoever that I can tell. I picked up this little optical Logitec which automatically turns off the mouse if not in use, to save the battery. Sweet!

Sam, what the hell did you say?

Assault rifle has 410 bullets total, not the 300 that I thought? My god, you're right. Yes, now I remember. You stock up on ammo and you have 360 rounds of ammo, and 50 in the clip? Can that be?

I turned on the game to check! What the hell, colt has a 50 round clip.

So the 30 rounds per clip comes from all the Counter Strike Source I was doing 2 weeks ago! Sorry guys for posting bad info on the forum!!

Anyway, that is a real shock about the Colt having 50 rounds.

Holy crap! I entered the No Mercy Single Player Advanced finale and you can't select an Uzi if your life depends on it. You are only carrying one pistol, and there are only 3 guns on the table: 1 the colt, 2. the auto shottie, and 3. the hunting rifle.

But where is the damn Uzi? I know there was an Uzi. Of course I was playing round after round after round. Come to think of it, several times I grabbed the regular shotgun accidentally when I meant to grab the auto shotgun, and now I don't even see that on the table. (So I guess the director, seeing how pitiful I was doing, failing round after round, decided to make all the guns available to me, hahahaha.)

Alright, we have established that Colt and Uzi both have 50 rounds per clip. In that case, other than the Colt being more powerful, as Sam has pointed out, does the Uzi have anything over the Colt?

Well ..... Hell, yes it does! Here is one key advantage of the Uzi over the Colt: On a per clip basis, the Uzi unloads its ammo 50% faster than the Colt!

The little Uzi just spits out those damn rounds like it was a fire sale!

By the way, guys, I've been reading and reading. I said in my last post that the Colt doesn't appear in COD4, and I was wrong. The M4 of COD4 is directly derived from the Colt M16. The main difference is a 6 inch shorter barrel. The shorter barrel makes it less effective over 300 meters in distance. However studies have found that most combat situations occur in 100 meters or under. In Counter Strike, the colt has awesome accuracy from one side of the map to the other - I have gone one on one against an AK on the other end of the map and beaten the (more powerful) AK many times, as long as he doesn't start firing first with his one-round kill ability. With the lower recoil of the Colt, versus the AK-47, when I start firing first, in controlled bursts, the impact reduces his ability to accurately aim, and he's mine!! LOL

Back to Sam’s observation about speed of movement depending on which weapon you are carrying. So, Sam, it's true? You DO "run" slower holding the assault rifle. (You said “walk” but didn’t you mean “run?” The game is ALL RUN, isn't it, other than when you crouch, or is there something I'm missing?) So if you want to get the hell out of there, Q quick change to pistol! Kevin - take note! Come to think of it, I believe I DID notice that hunting rifle was really slow to run with. Is that correct? What about shottie?

Good observation Sam. I used to wonder on CS why guys would switch to knife as they moved quickly across the map – I thought they were just being macho until I learned later that you run faster, lol. What about pipe bomb or molotov, Sam. I imagine that you run as fast as pistol with one of those selected.

Kevin, glad you're getting used to the controls, and that the tutorial actually benefited somebody. I didn't know if you were actually already past that point when I wrote it, but I thought it couldn't hurt, just "in case."

As regards the witch, I also understand, in addition to "no flashlight" that you have to actually crouch down (Ctrl key with little finger) and sneak past the witch that way, if you want to really be sure of not startling her. Hahaha.

Rich

 

As much as a wired mouse annoys me (and it does), it's less than 1% of the annoyance of the weight, reliability and precision of a cordless mouse. Buy a Razer, use it for a fortnight, and you will hate wireless mice, I guarantee it.

 

Sam, that sounds quite convincing. My mouse is so bad - it's a typical $5 optical mouse - in fact I think I got it for free with an order of ink jet cartridges - that right now the $30 optical mouse that I got for the laptop is a huge step up. But as much as I also hate the wire, which for some reason always wants to push back against, me, and despite the fact that the optical is working quite well actually, I respect your judgment and it sounds like the Razor deserves a try. Let me ask you this, however, what about the argument for laser over optical? Any advantage there?

Changing subject, Kevin, how is the Left 4 Dead coming?

Speaking of Left 4 Dead, our forum, After Dawn, was well represented today fielding a complete Left 4 Dead team with myself, Sam, Jeff and Shaff's little brother Soaid - I forgot how he spelled it - pronounced roughly SHO-ayd. We blasted through No Mercy - Soaid's first Left 4 Dead multiplayer experience (he's a COD4 man like his brother) on Normal - and we all made it out of there on the first attempt feeling quite good about that.

Soaid bid us goodbye, and the three of us continued on, ratcheting up the difficulty to Advanced, and switching to the campaign called Blood Harvest. We all got killed at the finale, about 4 or 5 times. Then Sam went to dinner, and shortly thereafter, Jeff and I took a break for lunch.

I ended up coming back to the same lounge and playing with the bots on the same Blood Harvest Advanced finale.

For some strange reason, again the Uzi came through for me, after 5 or 6 failed attempts with other weapons, including the Uzi. At the end, I got out of there with 2 bots. (The 3rd bot was fine until the very end but got pinned by a tank on the steps into the armored carrier, lol.)

Being that the team was all bots plus me, I was the lucky one who got to trigger the alarm. Telling the bots "Wait" with the Z key, I switched to pistols to run as fast as possible before they lost their patience and started following me around again. Hitting the final alarm and returning to the barn, I have to say that the terrible blood-curdling zombie scream, when the horde starts coming, manages to never lose its horror!!!! It always send chills up my spine as I make sure that clumsy me does not get into such a f**king panic that I bungle the ladder climb onto the ceiling of the barn. Hahaha.

In other words, the game scares the crap out of me!

Regarding the Uzi, I don't really know if it is just happenstance. At one point Sam was quite insistent that I grab a level 2 more powerful weapon, so I grabbed the Colt. But the success at the end, once again, was the Uzi. I have only made it out of 2 advanced finales, both times with 3 bots, and both times with the Uzi.

Again, my tentative theory (based on very little data actually I must admit) is that the 12.5 rounds per second Uzi fire rate, 50% faster than the 8.33 Colt fire rate, better suits my L4D game style somehow. I can empty the entire 50 round clip on the tank in 4 seconds, not 6 seconds for the Colt 50 round clip. The hardest time I have is staying out of the tank's line of concrete-block-throwing fire, so if I can quickly damage him and run away as I reload, I like that. Theoretically the Uzi should deliver less damange per bullet on the tank, but somehow it seems to bring him down, again maybe because he gets hit with more of my Uzi bullets.

Perhaps it all proves what I have always said - that at heart I am a confirmed P90 man, lol.

Rich

 

Rich, we should play some l4d together. what is your steam id? mine is "krj15489"

 

It's Shoaib. The fire rate of the colt is around 12rps, and the Uzi is about 16-17.
If you thought L4D was scary, wait until you play The Hidden. Plus, it has a P90

 

Slowly! I hardly find time to play darn it. Plus Ive got a million other things going at the same time LOL! Multitasker extraordinaire LOL!!! Im about to drop one of those things though, that takes up a great deal of my time. DONT ASK LOL!

 

Caring for a giant hydroponic marijuana setup? LOL!

 

ROFL! How'd you guess!
Nah, just some particular computer processes, that hog a bit of resources. Since Im staying with my mother for the time being, Its not practical to run my other rig. And its hard to find another job, that suits my needs

My primary job is quite physical, so I want a very CAKE job for a secondary. Its hard to find one right now, because no one is hiring. Im currently trying to think/find a way to make my computers work for me LOL!